


The Protégée (Continued)

by nigellecter



Series: The Protégée || N&M [2]
Category: Charlie Countryman (2013), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 01:02:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8690467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nigellecter/pseuds/nigellecter
Summary: Time jump, Léon the Professional AU. Nigel x Mischa.





	1. Chapter 1

A permutation, both in the encompassing aura which they both reside and casting their luminescent lights upon each other as they bathe in a fresh layer of sanguine blood, all he could manage to see is Mischa’s fragile form. The continuous gossip between their pressed body sings with renewed unification as his thumb contours through her side; featherlight strokes, defining her sensual curves. Starting with her handsome forehead, trailing beneath her damp locks and wiping off the assailant's’ blood in the process. All the accumulated memories unfurl like a reeled film as he recalls their every afternoon routine. He would get up without an alarm at almost exactly the same time, Mischa would come back from the grocery store with all the necessary ingredients for his smoothie, take a stroll with his dachshund named Twinkle. By the time she stepped into their little clandestine residence, he would be drenched in sweat, with a thousand sit-ups completed and ravenously hungry, with a faint curl of smile stretching from cheek to cheek upon her humming footsteps. 

Now they had been together for a quite a while, bonding in the most maverick and wayward manner as he would proudly flaunt her in some of his less jeopardizing jobs. Mischa would circle around him, checking as if his all-black clad form, effectively hidden beneath the contouring shadow upon the window’s edge would be bruised, scraped and gashed. After making their quick getaway and hiding behind a huge lorry perched across the sidewalk, where closed-off construction site had been eerily trailing them with such potency, as if their lives would crumble, it would crumble atop of them in a demolition. 

But no, he would protect his favorite flower upon the desolate and barren earth, no matter what it takes. He wonders if he could ever reside fully within her heart, as she does his now. Every look he peers upon her, he wishes he could be consumed by her blinding light, upon his woeful darkness. Even when he’s overwhelmed by the opalescence black of tainted blood, his heart shatters in a million pieces and the gloom aura engulfs him whole, he would be her dark night upon the wretched world full of adversaries. Entrapping her beneath his heat and advancing without a hesitation, he burrows into her gentle profile, molding himself into her in whole as charged breath propels through his windpipe. No more afraid he would ever lose someone that owns his heart in a shackle, and utterly in love. Together they seem to concoct a miracle, as he feels her breath in his face as he pulls her closer, arms tightly wrapped around her tiny face as his broad hand penetrates upon her own scars, mending them entirely. 

___

_ Fuck you, Nigel. Fuck you and fuck your beautiful voice and beautiful eyes and your inability to take things as they are. Fuck you for always fighting for my happiness.  _

Mischa didn’t answer for a long moment. Her thoughts ricocheted back and forth between what she felt was best and what she  _ wanted, _ and what it all meant moving forward. Last night had been a mistake. It had been  _ too fast. _ As much as she felt there could be more to their shaky, unstable situation, there was far too much to think about in terms of their capabilities. For one, he was her teacher and mentor. Being his lover would make things so difficult, wouldn’t it? There shouldn’t be a blur, and yet it was already forming whether she wanted it to or not.

To make matters stranger, he  _ was  _ so much older. Their maturity levels were almost identical, as they had both experienced unspeakable tragedy in their lives, yet she still felt he was somehow wiser in the workings of the world they lived in. He was older than she was, and it wasn’t difficult to tell, either. As she rinsed her hair out, she felt his hand, gentle on the back of her neck, and it made her sigh in relief. It felt familiar. Warm.  _ Comforting _ . And she wanted so desperately for this to be  _ them _ .

But it was the very idea of her tormenting uncertainty that told her things shouldn’t change anymore than they already had.

“Nigel…” she murmured. Where the hell was she supposed to begin?

“You and I both know things can’t be that way,” she said quietly. Even as she spoke, she did nothing to push his hand away. It was easier that her back was turned to him. She was too cowardly to face the pain in his eyes.

“I’m sorry. About last night. It shouldn’t have happened. It’s not – “

She cut herself off, unsure of where to go from there. To say what she really felt would be cruel and unkind. 

“I’m sorry. I am.”

___

_ Knock, knock, knock.  _

Along with Mischa’s knock on the door, everything would unfold from there. By standing behind her like a vehement bedrock, he’s urgently telling her to breathe and slowly untense her slouched shoulders, so she would ease into her first day of real-life experience, her first series of kill. Just like Gabi had done for him when she had taken his own place in the netherworld. He always believed in due time, all the pain would subside and memories would overlap. He wouldn’t have to wander into his life without a single sparkle within his hazel. 

And now it had. The film had rolled, recorded their kills one by one and the silvery blue light upon them is glowing. The deep kiss surges beneath his deepest core, where he could feel his heart drumming. For they are warm and safe, the kiss electrifies and awakens him up towards the rising paradise instead of the sinking abyss. 

The scene immediately begin to unfurl and melt into his coppery flesh as if he had still craved the sound of the swooshing gunshot, along with the featherlight touch he placed upon the protruded elbow of hers. As if Mischa needed his gentle guidance; his skin just wanted to feel her touch, that drastic difference of her alabaster and unblemished skin, still retaining the youthful appearance as he murmured against her ear as his penetrative gaze pierced right through flabbergasted, unexpected victims of her target.  _ “Arms straight, breath in and breath out, let your confidence do its work.”  _

Now everything cuts back to her, as her concurrent kiss sticks to the void of his mind. Dizzying and petrifying, he could crumble right here and now even before they make it back to their most recent residence, much nicer hotel room with tasteful bath and queen-sized bed that seems to feel as if they had been floating instead of gravitationally drawn to the ground. “Why don’t you take me home?” Lips stretch into a subtle arc close against her lips, their exchanged breaths puffing out beneath the chilled autumn air. Breathlessly, and feeling the honesty in her equally thrumming heartbeats as theirs kiss and bump, his fingertip trails down her face, as if tattooing his trace. “Would you want to study me, just like you had with your gun?”

___

Perhaps if she hadn’t been drinking so heavily she wouldn’t have seen so much humor in what he said. His voice seemed very, very close, almost silly in that she could have sworn he was whispering directly into her ear. Was he? Mischa couldn’t tell. But it wasn’t important and she didn’t care. She didn’t consider repercussions, emotional nor physical, to her invitation to come and sleep with her, nor did she consider the fact that she’d have to wake up and hunt down the mobster responsible for both of their previous lovers’ deaths. Tonight, Mischa only craved to be held and kissed and made into light again; whatever it took to have Nigel’s mouth on her skin.

“In more detail than you could ever teach me,” she murmured, nuzzling against the crook of his neck. As cool as she  _ thought _ she may have sounded, her words ran together almost incoherently as she laughed at nothing in particular. This was a memory worth salvaging; would she even remember this in the morning? Or would she hate herself for being so pathetically stupid yet again?

Mischa grabbed his hand. “Let’s go home, then.” If a hotel room in the midst of wealthy Bucharest was worthy of the title, then so be it. Even if it was nice, that wasn’t really home, was it? Perhaps being together made it so.That was worth admitting, at the very least. She didn’t have to love him to appreciate his presence, to enjoy his company, to want to spend all her days with him…

_ Not at all. _

But when they stumble through the door, laughing at everything and nothing all at once, they were laughing at home. When they kissed, clumsily and unpracticed with fingers fumbling for shirt buttons and Jean zippers, they were home. When Mischa tripped on her way to their bedroom and nearly cracked her head open on the bed post…she was home. When the bed creaked beneath their shared weight, it was their bed in their home. In this moment, she didn’t miss Will or think of her dead mother and father and older brother. There was Nigel, and there was the present, stretching into an uncertain and violent future before them.


	2. Chapter 2

_ How could series of grave misfortunes bring such a celestial being within his embrace? _ Believe it or not, he did get used to all of it. Doing things absentmindedly, without the joy of life and seizing the day to the fullest, because he’d been doing it his whole life. No spontaneity; instead of running in the wild like an untamed and unrestrained beast, he was shackled down with the routinely reality of encompassing his entirety in his work. Disregarding the fundamental nature and what he really had been at heart, he hid beneath the slanting shadows of the ledges, instead of looking up at the star-studded sky that would bring him a fleeting second of tranquility. Retaliation and revenge was such a fickle thing;  _ was Gabi ever going to come back even when his vengeance was completed? _ There would be more tear, widening gap that would turn into a void and no one could ever fill that abysmal emptiness. 

_ Until now.  _

Where the stars could sparkle unobstructed and all he could hear through the bursting heartbeats is the deafening trumpets ringing against his eardrum. A discrepancy; as the world becomes devastatingly quiet, his sparkling nerves generate such electrifying sensations that his muscles immediately awake. He’s already bewitched by her presence, as gleaming eyes revel her in adoration; blended by the shared shadows and traumas of their past, once the gap had been opened, the severance had been inevitable. Teetering between certain unexpectancy and anticipation, how long did he wait for the rightful moment? His desire to express bleeds through the nerves and with her satisfactory answer, lips effortlessly stretch, as they mold further onto where he could feel her pulse. 

“I want you to fucking break me apart, disregard the correct procedures, I’m yours to take apart,” soon, she’ll be here, not just in his dreams and he’ll be able to reach the places he had been visualizing. For their hands intertwine, where no illumination could separate where they begin and end, an conglomerated mass upon grins and giggles breaking the silence.  

If he was a floating speck of stardust until now, he was now finally grounded and wherever Mischa existed, that place would be his home; it could be the trashed, cramped studio apartment from before or more luxurious and flamboyant place they had been staying in the middle of such unfamiliar city full of unknown events and obscurities. Loss for words and feeling like a teenager losing his virginity for the first time, the laughter reverberating from his larynx finally releases upon discarded garments. Overwhelmed with happiness, the sorrows that had permeated through his bone dissipates into the air, charged with ravenous desire and he sinks into her again. He could be the praying mantis and she could devour him in the midst of their fornication - he wouldn’t give a shit what happens to him.

___ 

She took him into her arms, wholly and entirely. Unashamed and unburdened by thoughts of tomorrow, nor by thoughts of the past. He was beautiful, and she was willing to act upon the desire she had kept hidden from him and herself alike. What had it been to cause them to break the strict confines of their relationship of pupil and teacher? Was she really fooling herself to think it had only been just that? Mischa had pushed away any thoughts of him other than the fact that he was beautiful. Beautiful, kind, patient, and entirely devoted to her in ways she often felt she did not deserve.

She hadn’t felt this way since she had been with Will. He had always been gentle and hesitant around her, afraid he’d somehow break her if he got too rough. Perhaps it was just that she and Nigel had been drinking too much, thus clouding her thoughts like heavy fog; but she could swear they fit better, physically, mentally, wholly, than she could ever imagine.

She sighed his name, her nails creating deep claw marks down his back that would surely be more prominent in the morning, a reminder of their experience more blissful than she could ever imagine. Tight to her frame, he was somebody she swore she’d never let go of, no matter how the insanity of their lives threatened to hold them at bay. They were warriors, and now, Mischa was able to fight for her own. Fight for  _ herself. _ And somehow, she had made his life better too.

Urging him on, she didn’t halt her breathing of his name until he rolled off of her, his fingers touching hers from beneath the blankets of their bed. From there, she fell asleep, instantly, for the first time in many months. And for the first time, Will Graham did not haunt her dreams as he had done countless times since the incident. Blissful sleep, with Nigel by her side.

___

Deep crevasses cut through his figure on top of his preexisting scars, the hardened carapace upon his upheld veracity of his covert steps. With the clandestine steps as he climbed through the night, return with the break of dawn, as time passed slowly as if he had been passing through the loopholes. Money was not an option, as Darko took care of all that and gave him the absolute necessity he needed to fuel his unimpeachable performance and contrary to his initial doubts and deeply embedded hesitation of taking Mischa in beneath his wings, she had been a paragon of all things he didn’t have; not the disillusioned faith, that he would believe in love and soulmates. Not after his head echoed with the lingering sorrow given in life.

Though his head rests in a soft place of their shared, cramped bedroom, the night thickens in relative silence until the air splits with his ragged breaths, and the fissure upon his rippling back widens further along with elevating climax. Where their beautiful, yet caught in between their respective memories of the past coalesce and only seen and observed by their recognizance.

There’s a certain vastness within their pressed bodies, as dawn slowly crawls and smothers upon their beautiful remnants of the memories, just like a golden sunlit summer days, implanting the strand of its trademark vermillion radiance. No more of the pastiche of their ugly past that tore through their muscles and left them hanging, even when they had each other in the process of mending. And when he feels himself swell, not with the restless dreams and longing, it’s the feverous heat that makes him shudder, in the quiet depth of her skin as he gets a glimpse of her. The world becomes opalescent, with the haze of thickened air and urged motions, not of desperation, but in treading reverence.

And as he lulls amidst the thickening fog, out of the corner of his eyes, he sees her sleep, the protective corners of the walls still whisper and breathe his name like they did through love. And through his unperturbed sleep, the collection of it still echoes through the cavity of his sacred heart as he recites the oath over and over again. If she had been the jewel upon the world, he would be the jeweler polishing her in profound and unparalleled radiance. Even when he bleeds and crumbles in the process. Just like the folds of her skin, their intertwined fingers signify the pretty words of poems, written through the ebb and flow of his heartbeat.  

___

Morning comes as inevitably as it always has done. The first thing Mischa is aware of is a splitting headache, enough to make her press her face deep into her pillow, shying away from the sunlight like a bat. Her whole body ached, and she could still taste alcohol on her tongue from the night before. She realized just how hammered she had been. The hell had she done that for? She was as lightweight as anybody could be, and now she was paying for it. 

With a groan, Mischa refrained from lifting her head from her pillow until the pain subsided into a dull throb. In slow, arduous pictures, memories of last night surfaced, only impeding her desire to move from her place in bed. She didn’t need to lift her head to know that she had slept with Nigel the night before, even if she didn’t remember most of the details. Her back stung with a mild twinge; he had scratched her, and she could only imagine that she had done the same to him.

It was pointless to think about it anymore than she needed to. She slept with Nigel. There was no more to it that needed to be pondered over or thought about. She would mumble an apology and avoid talking about it, and hopefully they could go about their life hunting her brother and his gang before he killed them first. That was most important. They had  _ responsibilities _ . She could only hope that they would reach a mutual agreement to forgive and forget, even if some, small part of her didn’t want that despite how much it needed to be done.

Dragging herself out of bed, Mischa stumbled to the shower and cranked the hot water up to the highest setting. After scrubbing herself clean, she sat down in the shower and let the hot water run down her face and back, allowing her headache to subside enough to think clearly. She knew Nigel would be up soon, if he wasn’t already. She knew he might want to talk about last night. She knew she would rather  _ avoid _ the subject if necessary. She knew that she shouldn’t.

Mostly, she wished it hadn’t happened so that she wouldn’t want it again so, so badly.


	3. Chapter 3

He’s sinking into the familiar, tenacious grasp of obsidian darkness, but there’s a significant difference; his form touches only empty air and the pitch-black is featureless.  _ No more Gabi _ , nothing of the heart-wrenching explosion nor the shootout that had distracted his amorous focus to miss his target, which made him lose the love of his life. His heart clenches, but with an entirely different emotion.  _ No more grief and sorrow, confusion or hesitance.  _

And he was finally able to see the sun and celestial wonders without feeling unsure or feeling like he’s slipping away into the abyss with tightened muscles. His convoluted mind had overtaken every aspect of his routinely life and everything becomes simpler with Mischa, quietly sleeping by his side. They had a roof on top of their heads and she had been taking over the labyrinth of his mind one line and curve at a time. No more of a mere comfort and assurance. Two individuals with their trauma offering solace, now turned into a presence who expanded like the galaxy, filled with exquisite euphoria. 

When he opens his eyes, he finds a plain white ceiling, hazily spinning as the world continues to blur in smeared strokes. And a familiar face hovers over him, red and tired, dripping with moisture, but incomparably happy and content, curled around his arm. An arm splits through empty air and his eyes snap open, with a wide and relieved smile. His head still spins, but it’s something he could accept with still-vivid recollection of the night before - through a radiant smile, his kisses had already danced upon her lips and fingers became anchors that would continuously scrape and thread through each other’s backs as he never dared to lose the grasp.  

The gaze of the sun becomes ever more soaking, as he abruptly picks off himself from the comfort of the bed, where the previous night’s activity had been sketched through folds and bumps. As if the night wind had traversed through his hair, he looks as if lightning had struck him, and even when his form weaves with such unfamiliar torpor, he’s without a single care as he lets life soak him whole. Immediately, he’s in search for Mischa and gets ready for his afternoon routine, pushed back about an hour due to their drunken memories. 

“How’s your head?” Grabbing the traditional razor and shaving cream, he finds the subject of his search in a heap and wonders;  _ would it be the confusion, or did this quell her affliction as well, overriding the previous one that would be evermore the curse _ . “I hope you’ll be free from all the stabbing pain and all - may I join?”

___

 

_ Fuck you, Nigel. Fuck you and fuck your beautiful voice and beautiful eyes and your inability to take things as they are. Fuck you for always fighting for my happiness.  _

Mischa didn’t answer for a long moment. Her thoughts ricocheted back and fourth between what she felt was best and what she  _ wanted, _ and what it all meant moving forward. Last night had been a mistake. It had been  _ too fast. _ As much as she felt there could be more to their shaky, unstable situation, there was far too much to think about in terms of their capabilities. For one, he was her teacher and mentor. Being his lover would make things so difficult, wouldn’t it? There shouldn’t be a blur, and yet it was already forming whether she wanted it to or not.

To make matters stranger, he  _ was  _ so much older. Their maturity levels were almost identical, as they had both experienced unspeakable tragedy in their lives, yet she still felt he was somehow wiser in the workings of the world they lived in. He was older than she was, and it wasn’t difficult to tell, either. As she rinsed her hair out, she felt his hand, gentle on the back of her neck, and it made her sigh in relief. It felt familiar. Warm.  _ Comforting _ . And she wanted so desperately for this to be  _ them _ .

But it was the very idea of her tormenting uncertainty that told her things shouldn’t change anymore than they already had.

“Nigel…” she murmured. Where the hell was she supposed to begin?

“You and I both know things can’t be that way,” she said quietly. Even as she spoke, she did nothing to push his hand away. It was easier that her back was turned to him. She was too cowardly to face the pain in his eyes.

“I’m sorry. About last night. It shouldn’t have happened. It’s not – “

She cut herself off, unsure of where to go from there. To say what she really felt would be cruel and unkind. 

“I’m sorry. I am.”

___

Everyone supposedly copes with the wretched world differently. For him, it was his undeterred drive, transforming and making his grievance into something exquisitely beautiful. His charcoal-clad form blurring and blending beautifully into star-studded night full of enigmatic beauty and mysticism. An unfurling spillage of crimson ribbons and the lingering thrill of his muscles as his movements become a series of effortless glides and autopilots. Such unperturbed and impassioned task, yet done with such an  _ impasse _ ; no joy, actual exhilaration of killing in itself. Just a task assigned to him, as he stealthily moved about, along with the fluttering and lengthening shadows. 

That was him, until now, his  _ blackened _ , non-passionate heart having to pulsate above her, beneath her… Where the sun shined through the faults of his cracked chambers and he burned through.  _ A day of resurgence and reborn. _ How the usual ominous air of the motionless night had transformed into sonorous music tunes as he reminisced the anticipation, of their coalesced bodies moving in lassitude and blurring haziness. As his mellow hazel traces over the contours of her body, films unfurl in snippets of snapshots, as they become much more potent than the recollections of his previous memories. 

Such blended colors seep through his monochromatic world as the cascade of warm water bathes them whole and even in lingering pain from his gunshot to the left shoulder, such dull pain of unconsciousness and traumas retracting, to become a celebration of their unification. It wasn’t just a one-night mistake full of debaucheries as their consciousness had ripped open, to encompass the other in and vice versa; their shared scents, and even in their respective pain, their tenacious bond and ongoing desire to thrive had fed their fueling desires.

Now her words become  _ sparks _ ; not the full-circuit he let himself immerse and petrified the night before, but as an utter shock. He’s ensorcelled by the basking sunlight and idle movements of his fingers as he feels the strips of muscles beneath his firm fingertips slowly relax upon his ministration. Frowning in displeasure, he could feel his breath squeeze and exhale in such a scathing manner that she surely have taken notice. “My black and white film of life finally turned colorful and you’re wittingly striping me of the joy.” 

Didn’t she have an ink drop of concern for the broken heart and for a heartbeat, his veiled hazel becomes venomous daggers against her back. The only evidence of his distress present upon the fluttering fingertips that trace featherlight strokes upon the curve of her spine. “I very much wanted it to happen and I assure you, it will happen again, not while we both are intoxicated in one way or another.”

___

Mischa gritted her teeth as she washed her chest and stomach, acutely aware of his presence even with her back turned. As the hot water rolled down her back, Mischa swore she could  _ feel _ her blood pressure rising, even if his presence was normally calming and soothing whenever she felt out of sorts. Things would be different now, no matter what they tried to tell themselves otherwise. Mischa wished she hadn’t been so stupid.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t take that the wrong way,” she snapped, suddenly angry. She hated being mad at him. Everything felt confusing and wrong and entirely too  _ much. _ “If you’re so sure, then we don’t need to have this conversation!” She stepped out of the shower almost immediately with a huff, grabbing the towel and wrapping it around her body before storming out of the bathroom and into her bedroom. Even if her anger was unwarranted, she didn’t feel like speaking with him.

Sitting on her bed, Mischa buried her face in her hands, still wrapped in the white towel. Things weren’t supposed to be  _ complicated. _ Things weren’t supposed to  _ hurt _ this way. In her sorrow, she thought of Will, and piercing guilty struck her in the stomach. How quick she was to forget him in the name of another man. She couldn’t even tell herself that she was happier this way, because she wasn’t. The love she felt for Nigel, if she dared call it such a thing, was something that she’d never admit to herself nor to any other breathing soul.

_ Perhaps I should start by apologizing.  _

_ No. I don’t need to speak to him right now. We have a mission to complete. _

Mischa dressed herself quickly, pulling on a black pair of pants and boots with a button-up shirt. Clipping the necklace Will had given her around her neck, Mischa played with the small heart locket, numb to any sort of decision making that she knew had to be done sooner or later. 


	4. Chapter 4

Through the cascading haze of warm water soothing his temporary seethe, he lets his breathless thrum of his heart abate and dissipate along with the draining water, as the rumble becomes more like the hum of the wind. Even when they’re not necessarily touching, their wordless embrace had been enough to turn this into a communion between both of them. He couldn’t tell nor see her expression, yet she wasn’t pushing him away just yet. Her body is warm, not only because of the temperature of the water, as it practically radiates through him. 

And in that moment, how he had desired for her body to lean onto and touch his, so that she could register it wasn’t just a one-shot wonder; as he didn’t have to cry an internal ocean full of tears in wretched remembrance of Gabi as now they would hold each other, achingly close, as the tip of his tongue and voluptuous lips would do the touching, the salt sweat of her enticing him in, as he mesmerizes in her form as his ebullience matches that of the chirping bird appreciating a morning dew on the glass.  

Such lulling daydream abruptly shatters when her sharp voice tears through the steady ebb and flow of his heart and his purpose strokes upon the back of her neck, trailing the curve of her shoulder abruptly stops. “Especially regarding what had happened between us, I thought you would rather appreciate the conversation,” such aversion makes him to immediately pull the drawn curtains back, along with the enthralled enticement, affection, all the other amalgamation he had accumulated from the day she stepped into his room. 

He lets himself unfurl, whatever the clumped, indescribable emotions he had let himself be overloaded with. When his heart and mind had been broken multitudes before, he had found alternatives to glue things together and pretend he had been okay, lest he crumbles inward. An impressive architecture that would be on the brink of annihilation with the earthquake. 

So everything becomes a categorized ritual once again; in his usual routine, finishing up shaving he hadn’t before, lightly dressing up to retreat back into his room to let more of the sweat drops roll off as his back. Instead of letting his skin take in everything, he’s retreating back to where his grief and inscrutable determination resides and back to his worn-out, yet meticulously cared dachshund to calm his mind. 

___

Tired of  _ moping _ , Mischa dresses herself quickly, wanting only to sleep for another twelve hours as to not have to deal with the issue at hand. It wasn’t Nigel she was upset with; it was herself, and the fact that she couldn’t simply accept things as one way or the other. She wanted him, dearly and so desperately as only she could, and yet part of her knew things couldn’t work this way. She still felt, in one way or another, that she had somehow betrayed Will in his permanent absence. Mischa wondered if this would hold her back from future relationships for the rest of her days.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured when she hurried back into the bathroom to grab her hairbrush. She hardly looked at him as she yanked it through her hair, feeling anxious and on-edge for no reason in particular. In the mirror, their height difference was extremely apparent. She looked like a child next to him, and she wondered if that was how he saw her too. A child, unfit to deal with “adult relationships”. She wasn’t  _ Gabi _ . And he wasn’t Will.

“I want things to be like how they were…my brother still wants me kidnapped or dead or  _ something _ and we have to deal with that too. I still need training and you still need…a doctor, I guess.” Mischa grabbed her toothbrush and furiously began brushing her teeth, grateful she had something to keep her hands occupied.  _ But I also want you, _ she wanted to say. Would it be fair for her to be entirely honest with him? Mischa didn’t know. When she was done, she reached out to touch his hand, only letting the tips of her fingers brush against the back. God, she felt so small.

“I really am sorry.  _ Nigel…”  _ Suddenly overcome with guilt, she placed a hand on his cheek, unable to look him in the eye. All of her usual self-assertive confidence seemed to ebb out of her, little by little, his sorrow a crushing weight on her heart. Perhaps she wouldn’t need to feel such guilt if she didn’t yearn for him the same way. How could she know what was right in a world where they killed people for a living? Where she was on the run from her older brother whom she believed was dead her entire life?

“I don’t want to see you so sad.”

___

With nothing to gauge the profound incomprehension which had just taken place, all of his reserved senses draw with utmost precision. All he has, squeezed until not even an ounce had left out of him. Clad in his usual black boxer briefs, the raised, twisted, coiled stretch of gnarled flesh and the trammeling dull throb of his headache seem to gradually worsen; the waning stygian accentuates with a staccato of his enliven muscles and seeping colors, the bewildering appearances slowly winning over without any interruptions. After all, he had another assignment to fulfill and this wasn’t the end of it. 

His own daydreams are filled with sights that are quite different from those he used to dream in his oblivion. Just like the recollection of the genesis of his making, him having experienced the crossroads between life and death after Gabi’s death acquaints him even more closer to those cold, silent affairs. His own blood dried without a trace as crimson sheets become flecks of dusts, and the bones have been weathered into ash without him knowing it. The lassitude of his form and non-solace of the combined imageries, as contusions become faded petals, the sensitive ridge of scar tissues become a permanent fixture upon the ghosting impressions of his previous scars. 

He was riddled with paradoxes - discovering an absence inside himself. The dead remained…  _ Dead _ . While Mischa had been his charge, his sole responsibility while he was prone to succumbing to fear, the fear of losing  _ her _ so many times that he would be completely absent of fear even when he had been cornered like a helpless mouse upon the world of cats. Even when he had heard and felt the blood of several hearts surging together to form a greater force to overpower him, he was more than capable of listening to his own sublime enormity of a single heart, pulsing blood through that propelling vessel that would engage him in an imminent combat. That was the most beautiful and powerful sensation he could achieve upon his tangibility.

Without a proper elegy, no one would mourn his existence upon the world with a touching stream of words. No reminding of the present of the life of violence and brutal fights upon sun and moon, a  _ wayward _ search of light and darkness. “I’ll deal with your fucking brother, and don’t worry about my injury,” he dismisses it, though his blood-red orbs penetrate through her avoidant gaze. A tingle flares from where Mischa’s fingertips caress, over the defined valley of his veined hand. 

And he’s entirely locked in the invisible mold of the atmosphere, as if his nerve endings simply refused to move. The only thing sure is his rough fingers, capable of producing the most sonorous aria, along with the grim requiem. Through his dropping reflection, his gaze hovers over Mischa’s dripping emotions, then intently ignores and slips his usual charcoal button-down. “Would it be too much to ask..?”  _ Of her warm fluorescent light upon his raging heart?   _

___

Mischa held herself stiffly before him, aching just to touch him even though her head was turned away. She would not speak, wouldn’t allow an exchange of words to cause her to break down in tears of sadness and frustration as she knew would ultimately happen if she tried to explain herself further. Was there nothing left of them but this? Standing at an impossible impasse of uncertainty and mistakes? Mischa stiffened. There was nothing she could say, was there? Nothing she felt that she could ever utter; not here, not now, not with Will’s ghost hanging above her, a mournful apparition of her own design.

“I thought  _ we _ were going to deal with my brother,” she said quietly. “That’s the whole point of this…of this  _ teamwork _ thing we have worked out. You train me, I’m your medic, we take down crime bosses together…or…something like that.” Mischa stared at him, fingers curled just beside his jaw. It was almost comical, how we really was an entire head taller than she. She would have laughed if she hadn’t wanted to cry.

“Wait. Um…hold on. I’ll show you something!”

Mischa turned and ran out of the room and back into hers, slamming the door behind her. Quickly throwing off her clothes, she threw open her closet and rummaged through some of the things she had recently bought from the thrift store. The store owner had given her an outfit at half-price, and she had bought it because it had reminded her of the lofty singer  _ Lana del Rey, _ much to the owner’s amusement. Quickly slapping on cheap, red lipstick and heavy mascara, Mischa dramatically sauntered out of the room, performing an awkward turn of her heel before flipping her hair and batting her eyelashes.

“ _ You’re no good for me, oh you’re no good for me _

_ You’re no good for me, but baby I want you, I want you…” _

She giggled. She imagined that she probably looked like a drag queen, with her terrible, hastily applied makeup that was scarcely reminiscent of the mournful singer.

“Who am I?” she asked, deciding that this was the new game they were going to play. She leaned back in a chair and crossed her legs, pretending to light a cigarette between her lips.


End file.
